“Instead of being sent off somewhere with my maid to a horrid hotel, where I shall probably die of the blues and the lonesomes, as I did once years ago before Bobbin and Richard rescued me, why won’t all of you or some of you come and camp in the desert with me?”
Polly’s cheeks were glowing with two bright spots of color and her eyes darkening as they always did in moments of excitement or pleading. She had forgotten the sofa pillows back of her, upon which she was supposed to recline, like an invalid, and had raised herself upright in her chair with one foot twisted up under her.
Mrs. Richard Burton was still as slender as Polly O’Neill had been, but, unlike Mollie, her black hair had no gray in it. Her years of work and success had kept her extraordinarily young; but then she had that vivid quality which keeps people from ever growing old. She was not beautiful and never had been, even as a girl; yet her face was extraordinarily fascinating and her voice had an almost magic quality in it, which had come from her long years of training as an actress.
Everybody watched her now, as they always did whenever she talked.
“I’ll come with pleasure, Mrs. Burton,” Ralph Marshall answered, walking over toward her chair with his offerings from the tea table.
Looking at him in a friendly but half critical fashion, she shook her head. Her sister had explained that Ralph was a college student and the son of one of the richest men in the state, who was also a friend of her husband’s and of Senator Graham’s.
“Sorry, but this is a Camp Fire girls’ expedition and no male persons are allowed except relatives,” Mrs. Burton returned good-naturedly.
Then, moving her head in order to speak to her sister, she observed Ralph drop a small piece of paper into Bettina’s lap. Also she saw Bettina flush as her hand closed quickly over it.
“You know, Mollie, years ago when we started our Sunrise Camp Fire club we began to wish then that we might live outdoors some day in a climate where it would be possible the whole year through. Well, it has taken half a lifetime to accomplish, but the idea is practical now. And even if we have become somewhat elderly Camp Fire girls, your Polly and Bettina’s Betty are not. Then I want to ask some other girls—Dick and Esther’s two daughters—enough to form another Sunrise Hill club.”
“But it is the most extravagant project I ever heard of in my life, Polly,” Mrs. Webster remonstrated. “I suppose you haven’t the shadow of an idea what it may cost to have a dozen young persons living with you in a tent in Arizona, or half a dozen tents. It all sounds too hot and terrifying to me for anything. Please do forget all about it, my dear, or we shall all be so uncomfortable,” she ended plaintively, as if there were no escape had her twin sister made up her mind.